Indiana's Income by Race

The tragedy of Katrina brought some broader societal issues to the surface,
including the vast chasm between black and white income levels that continues
to haunt this nation. The per capita income of a white person in Orleans
Parish, La., was $31,971 while that same figure for a black person was
a mere $11,332, according to Census 2000. One would think that Indiana
communities would not have this severe gap dividing our communities into
well-off whites and impoverished blacks like New Orleans and other areas
in the deep south, but do the data support this assumption?

Undoubtedly, nowhere in Indiana has as high a concentration of African
Americans as Orleans Parish, where 67 percent of the population is black.
Lake and Marion counties lead the state at 25 percent and 24 percent,
respectively. Table 1 shows some common income indicators
for the ten counties with the most African Americans. Note: all calculations
in this article are based on those classified as white alone or black
alone and do not include those who indicated multiple races. Data is from
Census 2000, unless otherwise noted.

Table 1: Indicators for Counties with the Largest Black Population,
2000

Per Capita Income

Statewide, per capita income for whites was $21,198, while blacks had
an income of $15,049. In 16 counties, the per capita income for whites
was more than $10,000 higher than it was for blacks (see Figure
1). Per capita income for whites ranged from $33,378 in Hamilton
County to $16,036 in Crawford County. Meanwhile, that value for blacks
ranged from $48,349 in Brown County to $1,688 in Ripley County (that county
had only eight African Americans, all of whom were under 20 years old
and only three were 15 or older). As in all of the county-level calculations,
it is more likely for those counties with smaller black populations to
fall at the high and low extremes because there are not as many people
to compensate for outliers.

Figure 1: Difference Between White and Black Income, 2000

Household Income

Table 2 shows the distribution of income among black
and white households statewide. Twenty-six percent of black households
earned less than $15,000, compared to 13 percent of white households.
At the other end of the spectrum, 1.6 percent of black households made
over $150,000 per year, compared to 2.9 percent of white households.

Table 2: Indiana's Distribution of Household Income by Race,
2000

Indiana’s median income for those with a white head of household
was $42,744. That figure fell to $29,164 for black households, a difference
of $13,580. At the county level, these numbers can appear distorted where
the concentrations of black households are relatively low. For example,
Morgan County had a median household income of $47,791 for whites and
$176,437 for blacks (no, that isn’t a typo). Of the 12 black households
in Morgan County, nine earned between $150,000 and $200,000, while the
other three households fell in the $45,000 to $50,000 range.

Poverty

Marion, Lake and Allen counties have the highest numbers of both whites
and blacks in poverty (see Table 3). Those counties account
for 21 percent of the impoverished whites statewide, but account for 73
percent of the African American population in poverty statewide. Marion
County has about 5,700 more whites in poverty, although its rate was 12.5
percentage points lower than the black poverty rate. Lake County, by contrast,
had close to 9,900 more blacks than whites in poverty and the gap in the
poverty rates was just over 19 percentage points.

Table 3: Most People in Poverty, 2000

Poverty rates can mislead if taken at face value. Rush County shows
a staggering 73.7 poverty rate among blacks (see Table 4).
While not a pleasant statistic, this equates to only 126 people, and a
small percentage of the overall number in poverty in the county.

Table 4: Highest Poverty Rates, 2000

Median Earnings

The most current data is from the 2004 American Community Survey, but
it is only available for the state as a whole plus Lake and Marion counties.
For Indiana, the median earning statistic for all whites was $26,482,
while the comparable figure for African Americans was $20,673.
Table 5 indicates that the racial gap in earnings is much more
pronounced for men than for women (particularly in Lake County). It must
be remembered that women are working from lower wage levels than their
male counterparts to begin with; however, the gender gap appears to be
more pronounced among white women than black women. Nevertheless, black
women have the lowest median earnings across the board.

Table 5: Median Income By Gender for Those who Worked Year Round,
Full-Time in the Last 12 Months, 2004